Theory of Quantum Games and Quantum Economic Behavior

TL;DR

This paper explores the fundamental aspects of quantum economic behavior, analyzing how quantum strategies and goods influence economic interactions, money emergence, and mechanism design in a quantum-enabled economy.

Contribution

It introduces a quantum economic model with entangled strategies, revealing novel properties of quantum games and their implications for economic theory and mechanism design.

Findings

Quantum goods can emerge as media of exchange in a quantum economy.

Entangled quantum strategies lead to unique game-theoretic properties.

Quantum strategies can improve welfare regardless of opponents' actions.

Abstract

The quest of this work is to present discussions of some fundamental questions of economics in the era of quantum technology, which require a treatment different from economics studied thus far in the literature. A study of quantum economic behavior will become the center of attention of economists in the coming decades. We analyze a quantum economy in which players produce and consume quantum goods. They meet randomly and barter with neighbors bilaterally for quantum goods they produced. We clarify the conditions where certain quantum goods emerge endogenously as media of exchange, called quantum commodity money. As quantum strategies are entangled, we find distinctive aspects of quantum games that cannot be explained by conventional classical games. In some situations a quantum player can acquire a quantum good from people regardless of their strategies, while on the other hand people can find quantum strategies that improve their welfare based on an agreement. Those novel properties imply that quantum games also shed new light on theories of mechanism design, auction and contract in the quantum era.